This is the third in what is turning out to be a magnificent series of Lieder recordings by this discerning pair (its predecessors were reviewed in 12/92 and 1/94). Their account of Dichterliebe goes straight to the top of my recommendations for the cycle. In a deeply poignant reading, they expose, even more than do the exemplary Schreier and Eschenbach, the wounded pain of the protagonist, and the participation of a fortepiano gives the performance an intimacy that a grand piano cannot match. The simple beauty of the singing in the early songs is rightly countermanded by the darker, more dramatic tone and manner in ''Im Rhein'' and ''Ich grolle nicht'', with the top A on ''Herzen'' piercing, well, to the heart. These in turn give way to the plaintive sorrow of ''Und wussten's die Blumen'' the Innigkeit of ''Hor ich das Liedchen'', the delicately etched line and feeling of ''Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen'', and the numbed emptiness, so Schreier-like, of ''Ich hab im Traum geweinet''.
The draining of all passion is summed up in the repeated final line of the penultimate song, ''Zerfliesst wie alte Schaum'', with the fortepiano's afterthought so translucently played by Staier, whose postlude to the whole cycle, restrained and understated though it is, speaks volumes of the sadness experienced throughout. The truthfulness of the interpretation is seconded by the tenor's command of line and phrase, the player's close rapport with his partner. In short I cannot imagine the work being better enacted.
This intelligently planned programme then offers more Heine in the shape of settings by Mendelssohn and Schubert. The less demanding (for performers and listeners) Mendelssohn group allows an emotional respite between the soulful Schumann and the searing Schubert. Mendelssohn's setting of Allnachtlich im Traume shows him so much less aware of the song's meaning than is Schumann, but in lyrical impulse as in Morgengruss, the ever-welcome Auf Flugeln des Gesanges and Gruss he is a match for anyone, especially when these pieces are sung and played with such alert responses as here by these artists. Their lightness in Neue Liebe, one of the composer's famous scherzos, is exhilarating.
The five towering songs from Schwanengesang call for quite different attributes. At once, in the demanding ''Der Atlas'', Pregardien and Staier prove equal to the challenge, the anger and defiance arrestingly expressed. That extraordinary pair of anguished songs, ''Ihr Bild'' and ''Die Stadt'', are given their full measure of grief (and note the light, diaphanous evocation of the water on the forte-piano in ''Die Stadt'') with a gentle, rather fast (too fast?) ''Das Fischermadchen'' inbetween. Pregardien's silver-voiced sorrowing and communing in ''Am Meer'' is just right, the verbal accents present but, as throughout, never overdone. And so on to that Everest of a song, ''Der Doppelganger'' and a searing performance, with Schreier again as model but never aped, a stark, nerve-tingling interpretation that proves a fitting climax to a superb recital, faultlessly recorded.'